ANDREW Dunn became synonymous with the lovable canteen boss Tony in the hit television series Dinnerladies – so he was more than happy to return to the role for the stage show.

ANDREW Dunn became synonymous with the lovable canteen boss Tony in the hit television series Dinnerladies – so he was more than happy to return to the role for the stage show.

The first tour proved to be a huge success so the team are now back in a sequel with Andrew still under Tony’s hat.

“It was 11 years after the television series and the first stage show really came out of the blue,” he recalls. “They asked me about taking the role and it just seemed to be the right offer at that time.”

Comedienne Victoria Wood, who penned the original television series, went to work on the scripts for both plays and Tony says lovers of the show will easily recognise characters and scenes.

“This second tour roughly follows the second series so it concentrates a lot on the fact the canteen is shutting down,” he says. “There are parts that have been re-written but there are also parts that people will recognise from the show.

‘‘But I don’t think you have to have watched the television series really. You can still understand everything that is going on. In fact one of the funny things about it is that you see people in the audience who can’t possibly have been old enough to watch the original television series but they still love it.

“I was in Peterborough the other day and was stopped by someone in the street who recognised me and she can’t have seen it first time round. That is the advantage of all the television channels showing repeats!

“And there are people out there who know it much better than me. I did some of those scenes more than ten years ago so I can’t remember all of it.

“But I was in York recently when I was stopped by a man who quoted these lines at me and it took me a while to realise what he was going on about. Then he handed me the phone and asked me to talk to his daughter as they had a competition that if they ever found someone famous they could quote the lines to they would ask them to do it!”

Having become used to the television cast which included Victoria, Smethwick-born Julie Walters and Thelma Barlow, Andrew says he had to get to know the tour casts.

“It was very strange at first on the first tour,” he says. “There was only me and Shobna Gulati who were on the television show and we met all these new members of the cast and they kind of looked like the characters you already knew. It was a bit bizarre really as you kind of knew them

and kind of didn’t know them. But they slotted into those roles so quickly and you were soon used to it.”

On this tour, Andrew is joined by Sue Devaney, who played Jane in the television series. Performing the show on stage each night has some similarities to the original filming process as the series was filmed before a live audience.

“I think we were one of the last programmes to do that,” said Andrew. “It was a lot of work. We would film the whole thing through one night and then do it again the next – all in front of an audience. Because of the different camera angles we would have to re-shoot some parts two or three times.

“After the first run-through Victoria would go home and would do some re-writes overnight and come back the next day and we would make some changes. It was really hard work for her.”

Andrew, whose other television credits include 55 Degrees North, Roger Stiles in Coronation Street, and Alastair Campbell in Bremner, Bird and Fortune, finishes the tour in August.

“I have no idea what I will do after that – but life as an actor is always like that.”